Trump Plans $92 Million Military Parade—Honoring Himself
Donald Trump is pulling straight from the dictator’s playbook.

Donald Trump may finally get his long-desired military parade through the streets of Washington.
The Washington City Paper, citing an unnamed D.C. source, reports that the president has chosen June 14, 2025—the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, Flag Day, and coincidentally also his own 79th birthday—as the big day. If it goes ahead, the four-mile procession would go from the Pentagon in Arlington to the White House.
Seven years ago, Trump made his desire for a grand military parade well known after he saw a French parade in 2017, telling people at the time, “We’re going to have to try and top it.” But the idea got a lot of pushback from military leaders as well the D.C. government, who estimated that it would cost the military $92 million and the district over $21 million in public safety costs.
Trump angrily abandoned the idea, accusing D.C. politicians of wanting “a number so ridiculously high that I canceled it. Never let someone hold you up!” At the time, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser shot down the idea on Twitter, saying she “finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).”
This time, though, Trump has overhauled military leadership, firing four-star Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as leaders in the Navy and Air Force, including the top lawyers of those two branches and the Army. The legal firings presumably give Trump loyalists who would defend his parade if it is challenged in the courts.
As far as D.C. leadership, Bowser and the rest of the D.C. government appear to be cowed by the administration out of fear that Trump will follow through on threats to take over the local government. Bowser chose to remove a Black Lives Matter memorial to appease administration officials and has stepped up the removal of graffiti and homeless encampments following Trump’s complaints.
Trump has also set up a federal task force on D.C. crime fighting that does not include a single local official, indicating that he plans to keep interfering with how the city runs. That will now include a massively wasteful parade for his own ego, spending millions of dollars from both local and federal coffers despite claims that his administration is eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Will anyone push back against it this time?